Twitter have unveiled their plans on monetizing their social networking site. Called “Promoted Tweets”, initially they will include advertising within search results and on the Twitter website, and later ads will appear in the ‘feed’ to 3rd party applications such as an iPhone or desktop Twitter client.

Until now Twitter has provided a free service to their 75 Million users. There has been huge speculation on which advertising model the service would adopt.

Assuming that Twitter deliver targeted, relevant and unobtrusive advertising (As I write this I’ve just been served an Evernote Advert by Google Chrome opening up a new tab? WTF? I didn’t sign up for that.), I’m not convinced that end users will provide enough click through to satisfy advertisers.

Anyone who pays for online advertising will know that return on investment is crucial. If the occassional advert doesn’t deliver for advertisers (most of us scan through our tweets and only click through what interests, wouldn’t you agree?), Twitter will be under tremendous pressure to increase the volume or scope of the advertising. If they don’t they could face the prospect of a fall in their new revenue.

It doesn’t take a genius to work out what will happen if this is the case. Business is business, revenue will come first, and for me that will make the user experience worse. I agree with the arguement that in some cases advertising can help fund development and actually improve the user experience in the long term, but I just don’t buy this with Twitter. The mechanisms are simple and present already, and if the content isn’t desirable, we simply unfollow that user. Will Twitter let you ‘unfollow’ ads? Yeah, right.

Biz Stone did say:

“We strongly believe that Promoted Tweets should be useful to you…Promoted Tweets will be clearly labeled as ‘promoted’ when an advertiser is paying, but in every other respect they will first exist as regular Tweets and will be organically sent to the timelines of those who follow a brand.”

He also offers a glimpse at the way these tweets may look;

Anyone who’s used the ad-supported free Tweetie on Mac will be used to this style of delivery. Whilst I found them fairly unobtrusive I didn’t click on one single advert in the five months I used the app (I now used the paid version – no ads).

On paper Twitter is estimated to be worth $1 Billion but as a business it has yet to make any income at all. They have to monetize somehow.

My suggestion? All I’ll say is this: I like Twitter. So much so that I’d happily pay a small fee for a monthly subscription without annoying adverts. It’s a service I want to use. I’m sure I’m not the only one. Just not with ads please.

So come on Biz, if you’re going to force adverts on us, where and when can I sign up for ad-free Twitter?

Sorry for the title – I couldn’t resist.